


All We Do

by smolhombre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adulting is hard, Canon Divergence, Coping, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Grief, M/M, Minor Harry Potter/Neville Longbottom, Minor Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, PTSD, Slow Burn, non-epilogue compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-28 07:35:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12601528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: Hermione Granger lives her life, after the War. She's ready to live a new one.





	All We Do

Hermione turns down Head of Magical Law Enforcement two times before finally accepting the offer. 

Her first week she fires over half of her department, re-assigning half of the remaining staff to other offices in the Ministry. Her month-long tenure has thus far been nothing but interviews, the office filling up tediously slow with new people still desperate for her approval. Hermione had maybe only ever been so tired that one summer she and her friends defeated the Dark Lord. 

But Hermione would do it right, and she’d be patient, and she’d ignore the bile souring her gut as she apparates to MACUSAs southeast office one December morning shortly after her promotion. Their Director of Magical Security, Emmanuel Howard, greets her only perfunctorily and without so much as a handshake before guiding her through the maze of cubicles on his department’s floor. It’s odd, of course. They have all manner of extension charms at their fingertips to give them even the illusion of their own space, but aside from a few photographs Hermione can see in some of the desks, all of the cubicles are identical, greige, and joyless. Magical Law Enforcement wasn’t the most lively Ministry department by far, but even with Hermione’s new, short staff, her department was never as subdued as this. 

She follows Howard to a corner office, the shades drawn on its window looking out onto the floor, its door buzzing with so many wards Hermione feels the magic singe the hair on her arms and settle like pennies in the back of her mouth. Howard knocks a pattern on the wall a few inches away from the doorframe and the door swings open, each slow inch a shade whiter Hermione’s knuckles go on her briefcase handle. 

The office is neat and largely impersonal, save for a tea set on a tray underneath the sole window looking outside. There’s even a closed muggle laptop on the desk, half hidden under books and looseleaf papers. Hermione does an unnecessary double take to avoid looking at the body behind it.

“...Granger.”

“Malfoy.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Howard says brusquely, wiping imagined detritus from his   navy suit with his massive, heavy hands. “Ma’am, I’ll be out of the office by the time your done. If you need anything else from me, Irene will help you at the front desk. ”

Howard’s accent is nasal and sharp as a hoard of electric drills assaulting her eardrums, different from the slow, honeyed drawls of the secretaries at the front desk. He doesn’t offer her his hand in parting before the door shuts behind him, of his volition or Malfoy’s she couldn’t be sure. Hermione is glad to be rid of him and the sea of cologne he carried on his beefy shoulders, regardless. 

Malfoy rises from his seat, standing awkwardly behind his desk for a moment before walking around it. 

“Ah. Do — your coat?”

Hermione, already shucking it off, pauses in handing it over. “Thank you,” she says stiffly. Malfoy, to his credit, takes her obvious discomfort in stride (then again, he’s had practice with that, if she thinks about it) as he hangs the coat on his coat rack.

“I heard about your promotion, but when I got the meeting request I expected a minion.”

“Not for this. I appreciate you taking the time, I know you keep a busy schedule,” Hermione offers, close enough to her usual interview script that it’s easy to recite. “I’m sorry for not telling you I’d be coming in person. I didn’t think about it,”

A lie, of course. 

“It’s nothing,” Malfoy says slowly, back turned to her as he fiddles unnecessarily with his teapot. He’s aged well; Hermione won’t begrudge him something as small as looks, in the face of everything else. America has gifted him a little new color to his face, and if his hair is even lighter than before from all the sun it’s no longer slicked back so severely; all around he’s broader and fuller and less sharp, less ready slice down to marrow and viscera and wound to kill.

She accepts the tea with a little smile as the cream and sugar float from the tray to settle on his desk between them. Maybe she was a little dramatic.

What would he think of her, now? Anything?

Hermione crooks her finger and a sugar cube raises from its little glass cup, dancing a figure eight in her tea until it’s dissolved. “Not teaching us wandless magic was an oversight, wasn’t it? I know it’s illegal here, but it’s so useful.” She takes a sip and looks out of his office window to the barren, grey trees below. It is quiet, and stiff, and the tea tastes like ash but she won’t stop drinking it and risk a concession. 

Malfoy says nothing. Hermione has always had to be the one to do the work. “This is awkward, isn’t it?”

Malfoy takes a drink, and Hermione sets her cup down. It’s a utilitarian thing, and Hermione dares to think it’s a bit cheap. It’s enough to push her forward.

“I’m sorry. I’ll get to it. I want you to come work for me.”

Malfoy’s knuckles and lips are both white, his throat bobbing like he’s only narrowly avoided choking. “I thought this was a consultation.”

“No. It’s not. It’s not even an interview, just an offer. A — a request. I need a good team and you — I know you’ve been doing good work here. But I want you to come back. As my,” she takes a deep breath. “My second in the department as Chief Counsel, and as Head Solicitor for the Ministry.”

Malfoy’s face is as ashen as his cup. “If you don’t want this job you should quit, not angle to get fired. Publicly. Or humiliated. Publicly.”

“I don’t want to get fired.”

“Then let me advise you; bringing a former Death Eater on your staff will cause a certain amount of public upset. If my advice is good enough to want me in your department, trust it now when I say that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” 

“You’re the best counsel there is,” Hermione grates out. Each word is true and hurts her in the same place thinking about obliviating her parents hurts her. “There’s no one else. Even if I — could, or wanted to do it myself, I can’t be in court all day with my other duties. I need...you to do it.”

“You don’t,” Malfoy says flatly. “I negotiate sentences for Statute of Secrecy Violations and I occasionally, on an exciting day, get a case about an illegal shipment of Puffskeins. I barely do real criminal litigation, and you need a legal counsel anyway. Barnes outside this office is a good one, he’s desperate for a transfer.”

Hermione ploughs on like she doesn’t hear him. “The position will come with a significant pay raise and benefits, incl—”

“Granger. I left. I don’t want or need to come back.”

Hermione bites her cheek as she digs into her briefcase, broadcasting each move like they were two wary animals, circling each other around a scrap of meat. He hasn’t earned to truth from her, the full truth, so Hermione pushes the farce again.

“The weather must be nicer here,” she tries for platitudes as she brings her files out. “But I’d like you to hear me out anyway.”

“I handle civil —”

“You forged a muggle education to get into Duke. Magna Cum Laude.” Each purposeful word is punctuated by her pulling out his transcript, his bar results, his thesis; all the things she’d scrounged for in as much secrecy as Grimmauld Place taught her, trying to make them make sense. “‘Representations of Law in Public Spaces,’ that was your thesis. It wasn’t bad. Howard scooped you up as you were looking to leave the country, though I couldn’t figure out where to. You wrote MACUSAs new juvenile code all by yourself, and the trade agreement they just ratified with Japan. It’s impressive, I know they hoard that pufferfish. A better deal than I got with them.” 

His chest is hardly rising or falling in his stiff perch behind his desk, his back ramrod straight. Malfoy lowers his cup like all the gears in his body are overwound too tight. “Yes. I studied muggle law. American muggle law, which only rarely has any tangential applications in this job, which is only nominally similar to how I know the Ministry functions. Tell me how this helps you.”

“You’re working with MACUSA.” She rubs her thumb on the corners of his papers until thin lines of blood bloom on the surface, stain her skin and the paper both. “Why?”

Malfoy’s breathing is loud, but hers is too. 

“You know why.” It is very quiet, and for long enough Hermione stops expecting another answer. “You know, if I didn’t have an eleven-thirty, I think I’d ask if you drank. Maybe, anyway.”

As he rises from his chair, Hermione does see a little bottle of bourbon on the file cabinet behind his desk. Maybe he even meant that offer. Malfoy grabs her coat from its hook and holds it out, at first, like he has the thought to drape it over her shoulders, or hold it out so she can fit underneath it; Hermione is glad when he settles for holding it out between them.

She puts it on fast enough her sweater sleeves bunch up at her elbows underneath, but she doesn’t bother to fix them.

“I’m sorry the first time you have to see me is — I’m. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it like this, Malfoy. Draco.”

Hermione doesn’t actually know who she’s speaking to when she says it; herself, at thirteen, herself, at thirty-three, a schoolyard bully, an old enemy, a stranger. 

“However you —” Malfoy sucks on his teeth. “It’s fine. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

Malfoy holds open the door, and Hermione ignores how she knows he doesn’t mean that, really.

“If...you do need something else, I’m sure you have my address.”

She tries for a smile, gives it up as a bad job. 

“I do.”

Hermione doesn’t say goodbye, but neither does Malfoy. She doesn’t even look at him as she leaves, much less spare a glance back as she descends the elevator to the MACUSA Atrium. Her visitor’s pass is hardly in Irene’s soft hands before she apparates straight to her flat.

She owls in to the office saying she’ll be out the rest of the day. She doesn’t come in for the rest of the week.

* * *

 

Ginny rolls her out of bed Saturday, a quarter to one in the afternoon. 

“You’ve been ignoring my messages. My owl won’t even come here anymore, did you know that? She’s mad at you too.”

“I have wards, Ginny —”

“Who do you think I am?” She scoffs. Her hair is backlit from Hermione’s bedroom window to appear very literally on fire to Hermione’s blurry eyes, and it’s a relief when she steps back and out of Hermione’s immediate space.

“You’re pulling a Harry.”

“I believe,” Hermione yawns, “we agreed that it’s at least two and a half full weeks of moping before we call it a ‘Harry.’”

“You’re sleeping with your wand holster on again.”

Hermione rises from bed, shoving her slippers on her feet and using said wand in said holster to draw the curtains shut, summoning her fluffy housecoat. She puts a warming charm on the slippers and robe both, just because she can, before pulling the bonnet off of her hair and running her fingers through her curls.

“Did you bring food, Ginny?”

“I always bring food —”

A screech from her living room that has her and Ginny both barrelling sideways, wands aloft.

An owl.

Sighing, Hermione straightens as Ginny pockets her own wand with a huff. Pigwedeon chirps at the bay window next to her muggle television, pecking eagerly at the window. She waves her wand thoughtlessly to let him in, digging around for the treats she keeps in her kitchen as Ginny coos at him, stroking his head.

They both look wordlessly down at the letter before Hermione feeds Pig the treat. He enjoys the attention a few moments longer before Hermione shoos him out, shutting the window with a firm click. 

“I’m sorry he’s bothering you,” Ginny says finally. 

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” Hermione mumbles, weighing the letter in her hands. “He’s been mad since we — since I left, and that’s got nothing to do with you.”

“But this one — I...might, actually.” Ginny fiddles with the hem of her Harpies jumper. Her grass-stained sneakers have trailed mud into Hermione’s house, but it’s her clear attempt at tact that makes Hermione tense. “I mentioned you met with — that you asked him. Malfoy. To, ah. Work with you. Luna told me, sorry if she wasn’t supposed to.”

Hermione flumps into her recliner. 

“I was drunk,” Ginny adds baldly. “Percy’s birthday was Wednesday, which you should know, considering you were supposed to come over, and it just came out. But I brought pizza today to make up for it? And I pulled you out of a Harry.”

Hermione looks up at her flatly before tossing the letter on her end table. “I can’t live in the past anymore, Ginny. It’s not fair for Ron to want me to.”

Ginny, fumbling around audibly in Hermione’s kitchen, grunts. “I know that.” She sets the pizza box down on the coffee table, a bottle of moscato and two coffee cups following.  “I also understand why he doesn’t want Draco Malfoy anywhere near you.”

Hermione pinches the bridge of her nose, accepting the glass of wine Ginny offers. “He’s a good at his job. I’ve seen all his records.”

Ginny nearly dunks her pizza crust in her wine glass instead of the tub of garlic sauce. “Does that make up for —”

“It doesn’t make up for anything.” Hermione very nearly snaps. “Why anyone thinks I’m  _ stupid _ enough to think otherwise is what’s really beyond me.”

Ginny is quiet. Good.

“Hermione. What’s this about, really?”

“It’s about me wanting to do a good job. I can’t make him a terrible solicitor. He’s good. I won’t saddle myself with incompetent people if I have the choice not to. And if...if it helps m—”

“Be serious, Hermione. You’d sooner saddle yourself with a Death Eater who tortured you over literally anyone else on earth? I can’t blame Ron for being upset.  _ I’m _ upset. I’m worried.”

On the table in front of them. Hermione’s wand sparks, singing holes in the pizza box next to it. 

“He served his sentence. I can’t do anything about it, now, except try to move forward. No one can go back.”

“He ratted on other people just as bad as he was to save his own skin. He was just lucky to turn on them before they got the chance to put him in Azkaban for good. The only nearly decent thing he ever did was run off so no one here had to deal with him anymore.”

Her wand sparks again, and Hermione reaches for it, shoving it back in her holster roughly. Ginny frowns at her. “Luna is worried about it, too. She won’t tell you to your face, but —”

“If Luna has an official complaint as one of my aurors she’ll bring it to me through an appropriate channel or she’ll be re-assigned as necessary, if it makes her so uncomfortable,” Hermione snarls, breathing heavily. Ginny reels backwards.

“On what planet does Draco Malfoy mean more to you than your friends? Luna  _ saved your life _ , and if you bring him back here you aren’t the only one who’s going to have to deal with it! So don’t —”

“Get out,” Hermione hisses. “You can get the hell out.”

But Ginny is already on her feet, the door slamming behind her so hard several photos fall from the wall. Hermione rights them with a jerky wave of her wand, her pulse a beating racket in her very hot ears. After a moment she sends the pizza box flying out the window, heedless of the screams she hears from the street below. She keeps the wine, though, nursing it for the next twenty minutes until her floo lights up.

“I’m going to block that grate,” she says thickly.

“England north of Manchester is my own personal hell,” Harry says mildly, scratching the side of his nose. “Too many cows. The wrong kind of green. Muggle field trips involving lamb orifices I’d sooner forget. So I hope you don’t; I’d have to come visit you in person, and I’ve been through enough in my life, wouldn’t you say?”

“Leave me alone, Harry.”

“You wouldn’t leave me alone.”

Hermione sends him a watery glare as she downs the rest of the wine in her mug, then tops the glass off again.

“Don’t you have something to grade? Has Neville gotten tired of you bothering him?”

“Please stop crying.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t gotten any better at this since we were eleven.”

He smirks at her, mirthless, his glasses shining and hiding his eyes. “Sure you can.” 

Hermione doesn’t answer, and after a moment Harry sighs. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, you know.”

She takes a sip from her glass. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Luna said you were...uh,” Harry looks like bamboo skewers are being jammed under his nails. “Coping? Trying to process? I forget. But —”

“I don’t want to deal with it anymore.” Hermione doesn’t realize how much she means it until it’s out of her chest and into the air. “All of it. I don’t want to be scared anymore. I don’t know why that’s a bad thing.”

Harry winces like he’s in physical pain. He’s got some early arthritis in one knee and usually can’t be bothered with the floo pillow Neville keeps by the grate for him, so he may well be. “I know. It’s not. Just. They’re not going to ever like him, or like you near him, Hermione. It’s...I don’t think it’s because they think you’re a bumbling idiot. Hell, I don’t think it’s the  _ worst _ idea any of us have ever had.”

“I remember your testimony, after,” she answers stiffly. “Not that I need anyone’s approval for  _ staff matters in my own department _ , but I know yours isn’t one I’d have to worry about.”

“It  _ is  _ your department.” Harry pauses. “If it matters, I think he’ll do fine.”

She squints. “He turned me down, you know. What are you talking about?”

“Oh. Uh. What? I mean. What?”

Hermione nearly drops her glass. “Do you two — you talk?”

“We’ve owled before. Not a lot,” he adds quickly, when she feels her expression stretch to indignant disbelief. “I don’t. I didn’t mean to keep it from you, but.”

“You don’t owe it to me to say,” Hermione sighs. “Though if you want to send him a letter encouraging him to reconsider, it would count towards my Christmas gift.”

Harry smiles at her, and Hermione feels herself settle in her skin. There were more times than she could possibly count that she’d have paid money or let blood to see Harry smile so easily, and maybe it’s muscle memory that has her relaxing, maybe it’s the wine. Either way, she sinks back into her chair further.

“She’s worried. She, er. Loves you? I suppose. I mean she does, we know she does. Ron too,” Harry adds, looking over the rim of his sleek, rectangular glasses. “But you know that.”

“...I do know that,” Hermione grumbles. “I can’t believe word got to you so quickly, though. That’s a record.”

Neville’s head joins Harry’s in the grate, beaming. Despite herself, Hermione wants to smile a little, too. His hair is as curly as Harry’s has grown to be with age, though not as much of a riot. His perpetually sunburnt face is lined handsomely and scruffed in such a way that Hermione can understand the student love letters Harry reads over dinner sometimes, while Neville’s face glows so red it’s practically neon at the other end of their table.

“Ginny has never been anything short of persistent, has she? Apparated right into Hogsmeade and stormed into our flat. Still not quite sure how she made it through the front doors, protection spells and all. She’s racing Madame Hooch now trying to let off steam...but if she sets a record here with no one to verify it that’ll really do her in.”

Hermione rolls her eyes. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Neville shrugs. “You’re giving Harry an excuse to not help me with the mandrakes up in the greenhouses, so he should be thanking you, anyway.”

“I would never,” Harry says, flat but theatrical. “Hermione knows I love mandrakes more than  _ anything _ .” 

In the flames, Neville and Harry’s heads are pressed close, turned to look at each other in silent conversation, and Hermione lets the last dregs of her fight with Ginny loose. There are worse problems to have than people caring for you. Even if it’s at the expense of an insult to your intelligence. 

It’s two seconds of peace it gets her before a sleek-bodied, massive crow lands on her windowsill, a letter tied to it and sealed in black. 

She blinks.

“Hermione? Alright?”

“Let me floo you later. Maybe I’ll come down next weekend and you can show me how those shrivelfigs are coming, Neville? I’m nearly out.”

The grate isn’t even dark before Hermione is up and opening her window, letting the crow in to perch on the little bar separating her kitchen from the den. He declines one of the treats, but grabs a grape from her fruit bowl as she unties the letter from its leg. It doesn’t move once she’s removed the letter, and Hermione can’t help but frown as she points her wand at the envelope, casting two quick revealing charms and finding nothing of note. 

_ Hermione, _

_ While I’m still unable to accept your offer, I’ve thought about our meeting Tuesday and would like to speak with you again. _

_ If you are comfortable, we can meet at the Grindstone here in Savannah, which has a direct floo, or if you aren’t I will meet you in London, wherever you’d prefer. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Draco Malfoy _

_ (Despite my best efforts, Corvie is a vegetarian, if he’s still bothering you. He won’t take owl treats.) _

Hermione sits heavily on the arm of her couch. She looks to the crow — to Corvie — and he stares back.

“What have you brought me?” She dares to reach forward, surprised still that he allows her to stroke his head for a moment. Draco, he called himself. It seems like the biggest stretch so far, somehow, as she summons her papers and favorite pen and writes, bearing down on her knee:

_Draco,_ _  
_ _  
___I appreciate your letter. Given the weather here currently

She grimaces. Was she really talking about the weather? (Then again, what else was there to discuss between them?)

_ I would take you up on your Grindstone offer. I can meet tomorrow, if that is not too short of notice. I plan to be abroad much of this week for work. _

_ Best, _

_ Hermione. _

She doesn’t let herself re-read the letter even once before tying it to the crow’s leg, and doesn’t let herself watch it fly out her window, into the sinking sun.

* * *

 

The Grindstone Cafe is perched in the middle of the touristy stretch in Savannah’s Historic District, looking over its wide, brown river. Horse-drawn carriage tours pass by like clockwork on the cobblestone street beneath the cafe’s veranda, and the smell of the water and boiled crayfish and sugar from all manner of sweets clings to Hermione’s clothes the minute she steps from their floo, disguised in an out of service restroom. 

It’s also, she is no little surprised to see, mostly full of muggles. 

The cafe is busy, but Draco is easy enough to spot. He looks up from his drink and straight to her from the table closest to the veranda’s edge, just barely in the shade of the awning, as if she’d called him by name. Hermione allows herself to smooth her blouse down only once as she walks over. December in Savannah simmers oddly humid and cool at the same time, the sun filtering a weak yellow off the water next to them, and she has the peculiar sensation as if she’s walking through a particularly wide-cast muffilato charm. She lowers her sunglasses as she steps in front of the table. After a split second of hesitation, Draco rises from his seat, though he doesn’t move to pull her chair out. 

“Good morning.”

“Hello.” 

The waitress is by their table before Hermione is even fully seated. Her accent draws the individual syllables of words out slowly, though she talks fast enough Hermione has to ask her to repeat herself twice explaining things on the menu. It is one of the oddest things she’s ever heard. She’d worry about being rude, but the waitress laughs easily, pulling a pen out from the bun holding her curly hair back from her face. 

“I’ve had more coffee than should be legal,” the waitress winks. “I’m sure people down here ask about the way you talk, too.”  

After she leaves with their orders, Hermione and Draco both look at each other for a long, silent minute.

“This is nice,” Hermione begins.

Draco rubs a hand over his face. “This is awful.”

She bites her cheek, taking a long look around the restaurant, then the street below, trying to make them fit together with the man across the table.

“How long have you lived here, Mal— Draco?”

“Georgia? Three years.” He takes another drink; iced tea, condensation running down the glass and leaving his fingertips pink and wet. His sunglasses hide most of his expression. 

“You know, they had a tracker on you after, ah.”

“Azkaban,” Draco supplies, voice neutral.

“Yes. But they lost you. That’s a skill.”

He shoots her an unimpressed look, mouth pursed. “You didn’t lose me. Apparently.”

The waitress comes back with Hermione’s coffee and a plate of hotcakes for the table. Draco waits for Hermione to take one, smearing it in butter, before he reaches for his own.

“I couldn’t. Lose you, I mean. I couldn’t.” She takes a bite, follows it with a long swig of coffee as Draco stills on his side of the table, food halfway to his mouth. 

He lowers his hand and takes a deep breath. “Do you know why I can’t apologize to you?”

Hermione looks at him flatly. The table between them may be miles and miles wide, an ocean too broad to reach across; the man on its other end, if it ever did end, a statue both exactly the same as he was on the Great Hall steps over twenty years ago and a stranger she’s never seen before all at once.

“No. And I don’t care. I don’t want an apology from you.”

Draco’s breath is a jagged thing; she’s surprised blood doesn’t speckle the white linen of their tablecloth.

“I’m glad you owled,” Hermione continues, each word easier than the last. “I had a lot of time to think this week. About why I asked you and...and about why I still want you to come work for me. I haven’t changed my mind.”

He takes his sunglasses off, folding them on the table before pinching the space between his eyebrows. Draco has lines starting to web out from his eyes, his mouth bracketed with a soft parenthesis, looking very much like his mother. His sweater, a charcoal grey knit stretching across his wide, foreign shoulders, is pushed up his forearms so the bottom of his very familiar tattoo is visible.

Hermione takes a deep breath. “Everyone has moved past it but me. Harry teaches and hasn’t had a nightmare in months, Ginny and Luna travel every other weekend like they can do that without feeling someone is chasing them away. But I —“

“You think working with me every day will prove you’re over it,” Draco says, remarkably even. He looses another sigh as he reaches for his tea again. “Reasonable to me. In-character, at least.”

“I dreamt of your house every night last week,” Hermione forces herself to watch each line of his new body tense up, liable to shatter in any of the gentle breezes coming up from the water below. 

“And when you have to see me for hours on end every day, you won’t?” He looks up at her and finally he’s familiar, disgust bleaching his eyes of any color at all. 

“I don’t know what I dream of until you agree.”

“So I leave my life to keep you from taking a Sleeping Draught?”

_ It would be the least you owe — _

“This isn’t a life, Draco. This isn’t your home. Do you really expect me to believe you want to work for MACUSA? That you want to live here?”

“Howard wouldn’t shake your hand, would he?” Draco sneers suddenly, and Hermione jerks backwards without meaning to. It only makes Draco’s face twist up more cruelly. “He approached me, like you said. Do you know why? You do, you’re just pretending otherwise.”

He shoves the sleeve of his sweater up fully, laying his arm across the table. Hermione flinches, her mouth hot and sour and she looks around, waiting for the hushed silence, the jeers, anything. Nothing comes.

“Means something different, here. He didn’t give me the job offer  _ despite _ what I’ve done, let me assure you.”

Hermione swallows thickly as he pushes the sleeve back down. “You didn’t leave expecting to work for MACUSA. You didn’t come to America for that, I know you didn’t.”

The waitress is back, chatting about something Hermione doesn’t hear as she drops their plates off; the shrimp and grits she recommended to Hermione, a fried green tomato sandwich for Draco, neither of which are touched as they continue to stare at each other. The waitress might trail off uncertainly when they don’t look up to acknowledge her, but she’s gone before Hermione can feel bad about it.

“Have you thought I just had a change of heart, after Azkaban, and devoted my life to the good fight?”

“If you hadn’t changed at all you would have never met with me last week, certainly not had me out for lunch. You’d be in Azkaban again, or rotting in what’s left of your manor.”

Draco takes a bite of his sandwich and ignores her.

“Why did you go to the muggle universities, Draco?”

He leans forward suddenly enough Hermione can see the sea-glass curl of his eyelashes. “I could focus on how much I hated them and not how I wanted to hunt down a Time-Turner and get my mother out of Azkaban before she turned into Bellatrix. I learned how foolish they were for myself and realized maybe I didn’t waste years of my life, after all. I wasn’t entirely wrong, really; it was like walking around with self-important toddlers, poking at the fireplace while no one cared enough to watch them or tell them to stop. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Her ears ring, her skin barely holding the expansive disgust that stretches her body to its limits together. The sloshing noise of the river grates and threatens to undo whatever control is keeping her seated, her hands white knuckled around her spoon and cup but not on her wand where they itch to be. 

“I should curse you clear off this veranda,” Hermione breathes. “I should —”

Draco reaches in his pocket, and before Hermione’s even realized she’s done it she’s gripping her wand in its holster at her side, just stopping herself from brandishing it at the table.

He frowns, raising his hands slowly, palms out. “I’m not reaching for my wand,” he murmurs, looking around to the tables next to them. “I’d hope you wouldn’t pull yours out any further. I’m going to have to obliviate some of them as is, it seems.”

Hermione watches his brow furrow, looking around. It’s unspoken, but she can feel the  _ legilimens _ when he casts it. She forces herself to let go of her wand. 

“Americans obliviate muggles for looking at them the wrong way, don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. I don’t doubt you’d have done it yourself either way.”

Draco rolls his eyes, digging back in his jacket pocket. “Yes, we have quotas and everything.”

The little thimble  _ clangs _ against her plate when he drops it, and he’s back to sounding like a stranger, his voice crisp as dried paper. “If you want to curse me, please avoid doing so in public. I don’t want to fill out the paperwork.” A stack of green bills follows the thimble. “Stay as long as you like. The church crowd will clear out soon enough.”

Hermione wants to leave the portkey behind. She wants to stand up and take Draco by the shoulders and demand why he makes everything go tits-up whenever she tries to have a single conversation with him, why he won’t let her have this, the least of which he owes her.

She feels the little cracks of magic at the base of her spine, popping like a forgotten joint, as he obliviates the muggles on his way out. He apparates like a phone line cut suddenly dead, and Hermione can’t get to the floo fast enough.

* * *

 

_ Draco, _

_I have thought about our conversation two weeks ago and would like to invite you to London, as you mentioned in your last letter, to continue it._ _  
_ _  
__Moreover, I have a sixteen year old Ilvermorny student currently in the Ministry’s ward for performing acts of magic that violate the International Statute of Secrecy as well as English and American Wizarding Law alike. I will discuss this case with you in person before signing off on any pardon or transfer._ _  
_ _  
___Best,

_ Hermione Granger _

_Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement_ _  
__Order of Merlin First Class_

* * *

 

_ Madame Granger,  _

_ The waste of official letterhead for this notification was a truly offensive use of your department’s budget.  _

_Wednesday, noon._ _  
_ _  
___Sincerely,

_ Draco Malfoy _

* * *

 

Hermione sips her ceylon pretending to not see Draco walking into the Baglioni Hotel restaurant, hunched as if ready for a fight. 

Lovely. She disguises a silent muffilato charm as digging through her purse while he stalks over, dressed in an all black suit too fancy for even a nice hotel like this one. A heavier jacket is slung in the crook of his elbow, dusted in glimmering, half-melted snowflakes.

The restaurant’s lights are dimmed in lieu of the afternoon sunlight filtering in bright but bleached from between its heavy, fashionable curtains, but it doesn’t hide the stiff curl of Draco’s lip as he comes to stand in front of her table. She gestures to the seat wordlessly, catching the eye of a server near the bar. 

“Good afternoon.”

“Madame Granger,” Draco grinds out. Hermione can’t really bite down her smile as he takes his seat, setting his briefcase down next to his chair.  There was sarcasm heavy in that, but also something begrudging. Good. She is Madame Granger today, and not Hermione, and not someone Draco used to know. 

“Mr. Burroughs will enjoy learning you’re so concerned for his wellbeing and safe return to Ilvermorny. MACUSA is lucky to have you.”

“I’m sure Mr. Burroughs is enjoying the attention from the Head of Magical Law Enforcement herself more than anything. He’ll be upset to leave and return to the group home where he’s just another shuffled-off wizard born to a muggle.”

“That’s cruel,” Hermione says softly, after Draco has ordered a pot of chai from the server. “He’s a child.”

“Ah. So now he’s a child and not an international criminal for a wayward Jelly-Legs Jinx while in a drunken holiday stupor?”

“Even children can be held accountable for their actions, if the consequence is appropriate. Regardless of circumstance.”

Draco is quiet, and Hermione busies herself in her tea for as long as she can stand it, watching the paper thin lemon slice in her cup dance around in a current she makes.

“It doesn’t bother you? When you rewrote their juvenile code, you didn’t think to change that stipulation?”

He scrubs a hand over his face, stubbled today like it wasn’t at the Grindstone. “I don’t run Magical Security, much less MACUSA, Granger. The homes are operated by another department, anyway, and they’ve been doing it so long they won’t take well to an outsider saying otherwise. Besides, Ilvermorny has its own rules about where students are allowed to live to receive their education.”

“So it does bother you?”

“Speaking in practicalities, no.”

The plates the server sets on their table suddenly turn Hermione’s stomach. 

“It’s different than England, Granger. Secrecy means something else there, it’s not — every breach is a threat to them, like the whole thing will topple if a muggle sees something so much as shine out of their eye. Do you know how many m— how many muggle-borns have graduated Ilvermorny in the past twenty years? Miscegenation laws weren’t even officially off the books until thirteen years ago, if that gives you any hint. Not that any wizard would dare now just because it’s legal.”

“Americans built their magic on running and hiding, but that was a century and some ago. It’s no excuse to rip children from their homes —”

“Can you tell me,” Draco interrupts her evenly, looking clear above her head, “it would have never been easier for you if your parents weren’t muggles?”

The teapot between them gives a shrill whistle, levitating four inches from the table, and Hermione has to bite her fingers into her knees to bruising to get it to stop. The server insists on bringing them another pot, and Hermione all but shoves a petit four in her mouth as they switch them out. Draco only stares out the window, jaw clenched, as the other patrons slowly look away.

“My parents were wonderful people, and their being muggles didn’t make an ounce of difference to me. They were no more a threat to our world than I was as a  _ mudblood _ .” The last word is more spiteful than any two syllables have the right to carry. He doesn’t even flinch in the face of it; maybe he’s heard it enough its edges have all been worn down. She should be the same, really. There are a lot of ways she and Malfoy should be alike, separated by all the ways they aren’t. 

“Who are you telling, Granger?”

“You. I am telling  _ you _ .”

He grabs a madeline from the platter between them. “Not only me.”

Hermione pours herself another cup of tea from the new pot, delicate gold leaf swirling around the rosy patterns stamped on the ceramic. She’s fond of it; tells herself to be careful with this one. 

“You don’t still hate me any more than you hate muggles. I think you were grown out of hating me when we were seventeen. You don’t want to come back because you’re a coward. You can pretend the war didn’t happen while you pretend working for MACUSA absolves you of anything.”

She’d been saving that for later, but her chest is already lighter now that it’s out. Draco smiles down at his cup, quick enough Hermione nearly misses it. All teeth, self-deprecating, not at all fitting his face so like his mother’s waxy beauty; meant for pursed lip grins and small nods of acknowledgement, not real expression.

“I told you working with Howard is the opposite of absolution. But even if it was —  a coward is what you need in your office? You haven’t had enough of them in your life so far?”

“You didn’t say I was wrong.”

“Do I need to?” Draco takes a drink of his tea, leaning back in his chair while he crosses his long legs, ankle over knee. “I felt sure you’d get over the constant need for validation by now, after everything.”

The tea pot’s lid gives a warning wiggle, and Hermione takes a deep breath. “You know, I was just thinking of all the ways we are alike. Thank you for reminding me of that one.”

Draco’s barking laughter is a shock that shatters the brittle line of her spine and Hermione slumps backwards into her seat, her tea sloshing around in her cup and threatening to spill.

He is nearly smiling as he settles behind another sip of his tea. “Let Burroughs go, Granger.”

“Where does the portkey take me?”

He sobers up, the remaining softness in his expression wiped clean by an invisible hand. 

“Right to Merlin’s vault,” he says drily, clearing his throat. “Burroughs?”

She grips the handle of her cup tighter. “I had him escorted back to his group home this morning.”

Draco is very still. Hermione sees a thin layer of frost creeping over the tea in his cup.

“What was it you told me in Savannah? I could curse you clear off —”

“What I did bring you,” Hermione continues, as if she can’t hear him, “is an offer letter.” 

“To hell with your offer letter. I know muggles have all sorts of head doctors, it would be a much better use of your time than this —”

“How many times did we save your life that night? Just that night. Not including our testimonies after.”

The new teapot cracks clear down the middle, a hairline fracture still starting to leak and stain their sturdy linen tablecloth. Draco’s nostrils are flared, his cheeks splotched with color.

“Don’t you dare —”

“I very much  _ will  _ dare!” She shoots back shrilly. The muggles around them are turning to look at their table once more, their raised voices carrying past the bounds of her muffling charm. 

Draco, breathing heavily, rises from his seat. His face is not a perfect mask, but it’s no longer as flushed as he walks over to her side of the table. It is all Hermione can do to not recoil as he peels her coat off from the back of her chair, holding it aloft. Hermione casts a half-aborted  _ legilimens  _ — his upper lip curls, his eyes flashing in warning — before she stands, woodenly allowing him to fit it over her shoulders.

“Not everyone is a martyr, Granger. Politics aside, you overestimate me thinking I want to do anything but watch the Ministry burn for letting my mother rot in Azkaban after she saved Potter’s life.”

It is warm in the dining room from the massive fireplaces, and Hermione feels suddenly like she’s immolating in the center of one of them. His mother; ashen and willowy but silent in her living room, its ceiling so impossibly high from where Hermione was sprawled, pinned like a bug to a display. High and cold and glittering with promise; the chandeliers could come down and greet her with blackness and she’d be grateful, she’d be  _ grateful _ , of the beautiful sight of it. 

Harry had begged Kingsley, after, when she and Ron couldn’t and wouldn’t, respectively, but — but — 

“She was a Death Eater, Malfoy, there had to be reparations —”

Draco’s cologne smells of sea salt and sandalwood, stupidly tasteful, as he leans over to murmur in her ear. “So was I.”

Hermione trembles as he reaches down for her briefcase, handing it over without ever really looking at her again. His hand might brush her back as he pulls away, but she’s marching out of the door and into the cold, thin air of Hyde Park before she can do more than shove her hand in her purse, gripping her wand blindly to settle the offer letter in his coat.

* * *

 

Luna is an excellent auror. If Hermione would have doubted that at fifteen, first riding in the horseless carriage to the Great Hall, she knew better the night they stumbled out of the Department of Mysteries together, the balmy May air unbearably pleasant around them as they clutched each other in their sweating, shaking hands. They were unable to let go even back at Hogwarts, sleeping in pushed together bunks in the Room of Requirement for the remainder of the term while Ron and Ginny both prowled the hall outside the door, living off Pep-Up Potion and the promise of their nightmares.

The others were surprised, perhaps, that she was the only one to pursue it, After everything. But Hermione remembered Luna quoting Morgana’s autobiography like a prayer to drift to sleep beside her, and was glad to watch Luna set records on the stealth exam, the poisons test, and succeed.

Luna is an excellent auror. 

She is a terrible employee.

She levitates as if in an invisible hammock several meters above her desk, idly stretching into and out of her animagus; a silvery hare with massive, twitching pink ears and powdery white bobbed tail, as if she doesn’t have a stack of reports already two weeks truant beneath her. 

Hermione’s eye twitches as a new appointment request appears on her datebook, open on her desk, named only “Burroughs.” She huffs; Javi was coming in to debrief on the transfer he oversaw this morning and sign the final release papers, with the added benefit of reminding Hermione of her failure at the Baglioni. She presses her wand to the new ink to accept it.

There is the yawning maw of magic behind her, the noiseless pop of transfiguration.

“That is distracting,” Hermione tries, for the seventh time.

“I’m trying to get my transformation time down faster,” Luna replies, for the seventh time.

“Yes, I know,” Hermione huffs. A strand of Luna’s white-blonde hair floats down on top of Hermione’s papers, and as she swipes it away the wet ink smears across the last forty-five minutes of work she’d done. 

“Oh,  _ pissing bollocks _ —”

“You said if you ever heard me say that again you’d hex my tongue to the roof of my mouth. How the mighty have fallen.”

“Oh,  _ shitting hell _ ,” she swears again, turning around to face Ron in the doorway. He takes up most of it length-wise; unsmiling, his eyes as blue as his jumper, loose across his lean shoulders. 

“It’s good to see you too,” he says waspishly. 

“I — what’s wrong?”

Ron shrugs, his jaw tight. “Well, you never answered my owls, so I just wanted to make sure you were alive. Figured you’d make it to your office once more before you kicked it.”

Luna comes to her feet behind Hermione.

“We are working on our reports for the month, Ronald.”

“Yes, that’s what it looked like.”

Luna levels him with a look that has Ronald mashing his lips together, staring down to his feet. 

Hermione sighs. “I’ve been busy.”

“You are  _ always _ busy. It’s not stopped you before.”

“Alright, fine,” she snaps, waving her wand to clear the spilled ink. The scrolls roll themselves up and fit themselves in her top left drawer. “I didn’t want to fight with you about it, Ronald. Ginny shouldn’t have said anything to you to begin with.” She punctuates the last word with a unhappy glance in Luna’s direction. She’s seemed to suddenly have remembered the reports on her desk, shuffling through them idly and not looking in Hermione’s direction.

Ron steps closer than he has any right to, being that he’s in Hermione’s office with her door open for anyone to see, leaning over her desk and trying to catch Hermione’s eye as she busies herself in reorganizing the detritus collected there.

“I have a right to care about you  _ living _ , Hermione.”

She rolls her eyes. “Nothing is going to  _ hurt me _ . I can protect myself. We aren’t children anymore, and I need —”

“You need to use your head. Isn’t that your job?”

It is very still, and Luna steps forward again, a crease in her brow.

“That was unfair, Ronald.”

He squints at Luna, eyes blue like they were in the forest, burdened with half of a soul that didn’t belong to him. “Truth’s not always fair, is it? It just is.” He looks back down to Hermione, frozen in place as the past plays over the present like the recorded over videotapes in her parent’s home she missed so much her first lonely months in a four-poster bed that only ever felt like she was renting it, ready for her invitation to be taken away. “The war is over, Hermione. Why do you want to bring it back?”

“I want to move on, Ron. I also want to be good at my job. This overlaps —”

“You want a project to fix.”

“Like I fixed  _ you _ ?” Hermione spits, before she can think about it. The venom sits and seeps into the stagnant air between them of a fight they’ve had before. 

Hermione only knows Luna has left the room by a chance glint of sunlight on her long, fine hair from the windows opposite the door. Even if Hermione’s heart wasn’t pounding in her ears she wouldn’t be able to hear the nonexistent noise of Luna’s steps, even a jingle from her swinging earrings. 

“Don’t compare me to him,” Ron spits. 

“I’m  _ not _ ,” she grunts. “I don’t need your help. If I wanted your advice, I’d ask for it. But you’re making this into something it’s not. Even Harry —”

“Yes, because he’s never made a bad decision in his life. It’s not just me, Hermione. Ginny said you still haven’t talked —”

“Oh,  _ bugger off _ . Until either of you are Head of Magical Law,  _ you _ can stay on Diagon Alley, and  _ she _ can stay on her broomstick, and  _ I _ will handle what happened in the Ministry until such time it is  _ no longer my job _ !”

Ron, his ears a very violent shade of red, grabs the edge of her desk. His knuckles bleach white, the freckles on his hands standing out almost aggressively, close to moving around like marching ants as she’d sometimes seen them do. 

“Forgive me for darkening your door with my concern for your well-being. Suppose I should know by now I’m just too  _ dumb _ to try and care about you.”

She winces, even still, the millionth time he’s thrown that at her. “You know that’s not — you always do this.”

Ron looks around the empty office furtively. “What? Love you? Yes, Hermione, forgive me for that too.”

“Don’t start that with me.” There’s gillywater in this office, somewhere, that Bernard gave Luna to celebrate her engagement, and an illegal case of homemade Bulgarian firewhiskey in the evidence storage she could summon and replace or deny, if it came down to it.

The knock on her door has Ron whirling around, all but brandishing his wand. She feels the curse he bites back on her own tongue, the magic pushed back like a physical weight into her chest. Her datebook’s ink is flashing red in front of her, and she smooths her hair down irritably, stepping around the desk to greet Javi.

Ron is shaking and white lipped at her side. His wand is still half-outstretched. Frowning, she looks at the door, very tired and very in need of a drink. 

Draco Malfoy wears a distasteful curl to his mouth while Javi stands helplessly behind him, two inches taller than even Ron, all wide-eyes and an impeccably maintained beard.

Ron’s wand sparks, and Hermione can see a curl of steam coming out from one of his ears. 

“The hell is this?”

Draco sighs. “Work, Weasley.”

“We’re a bit occupied at the moment, so you can get the  _ f _ —”

“Ronald, that is  _ enough _ .”

He turns on her, mouth already open to argue, when Draco clears his throat.

“I won’t interrupt. I just wanted to drop this off.” He waves the offer letter, folded in half. 

“You’ll speak with me about it first,” Hermione sniffs. “Javi, come back later to finish your paperwork. Ron, out.”

All three of them gape at her. She _ tsk _ s, grabbing her wand on the desk and jabbing it at each of them in turn to punctuate her words. “Do. I. Need. To. Clean. Your.  _ Ears _ ?”

Javi turns heel and all but sprints down the hall, his shiny hair bobbing into the elevator and disappearing like a blink. Ron is rooted to his spot. 

“Hermione.”

“I will eject you out of this office if I have to,” she says lowly, not looking at his face. “Don’t make me do it in front of him.”

He stumbles back. Draco is making a pointed effort to look above Hermione’s head, his hands clenched in fists. 

Luna pops her head around the door. 

“Ronald. Take me to see the puffskeins.”

She doesn’t look at Draco, even in his direction, though Draco studies her warily. Hermione rubs at her temple.

“Ronald,” Luna repeats. “The puffskeins. I need to check them for ghost-mites or you won’t keep your permit to hold them in the shop anymore.”

Ronald rounds on her, mouth agape. “You are shitting me. That’s Magical Creatures that handles — ghost-mites aren’t even  _ real _ !”

Draco sighs in the doorway, and Hermione has to bite down her own. 

“Go, Ron,” she repeats. “Please.”

Ron’s back is a familiar sight, marching stiffly out of her office without a glance back. He nearly checks Draco’s shoulder with his own as he passes, Luna following silently despite him sullenly avoiding her gaze. 

Hermione clears her throat. “Please come in.”

“I can’t stay.”

“I hope you weren’t planning on throwing those across the room at me, staying or not.”

Frowning, Draco takes two very small steps into the office. She sees him do a very quick check around him for the windows, the doors branching off from this big, circular space into the smaller offices. He grabs a parchment roll from his coat pocket.

“You aren’t especially sneaky, Granger.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

He holds the letter aloft, unable to speak for a moment. 

“This letter. You — you could have said earlier what was in it.”

Hermione’s heart is thick in her throat, an agonizing squeeze from the inside out. “It’s an offer letter, like I told you.”

Draco leans forward suddenly, gripping the top of one of the chairs facing her desk. “The  _ conditions  _ of your offer letter.”

“I tried to tell you in your office there were specifics you’d be interested in.”

He sneers. “Specifics I’d be interested in,” he repeats lowly, incredulous, running a pale and barely trembling hand over his face. “Specifics like my  _ mother _ ,” he grinds out. 

Hermione has a jacket pushed in the back of her closet the exact same shade of green as their living room curtains were, backlit from weak morning sun. She sees it behind her eyelids now, breathes in the smell of rich, expensive tea and wet mold, the slow death march towards ruin holding on to decaying slips of grandeur.

“Your mother,” she confirms around her inability to breathe. “Your mother’s release, with conditions, if you work for me.”

“You are a piece of work, Granger. You are a — ” Draco straightens his spine like he intends to level a house with it, and he can’t seem to make himself look down at her directly, though Hermione watches him try twice before settling above her head. “I speak with her first, before I sign anything.”

“Done.”

* * *

 

Javi is Hermione’s newest auror, and she assigns him as Draco’s escort for his visit to Azkaban the weekend after their meeting in her office feeling only a little guilty about it.

Shifting awkwardly on his feet, Hermione watched him make the decision to ask. “Mum, isn’t it — shouldn’t it be you or Lovegood? By rank, and all.”

“By rank I make these decisions as to who goes,” she smiled ruefully. “It’s your first time to Azkaban alone, but I know you’ll do fine. If you wanted to bring Mullins or Cobbs, though —”

“No!” He said quickly, standing up straighter. “Just want to make sure you’re. You’re alright, is all. And Lovegood.”

“Considering I’m about to sit through a meeting with Sports about security at the World Cup, I’m doing alright. Thank you, Javi.”

And Hermione meant it, when she dismissed him shortly after, but now in Neville and Harry’s Hogwarts quarters is unsure  _ why  _ she meant it.

That’s cruel, but as she looks out over the Great Lake from their sitting room near the base of Gryffindor Tower, she can’t make herself be sorry for it. She’d not trusted herself to go alone, much less Luna, who had joined Ginny and Ron in their silent treatment, and Hermione tries to remind herself that her feelings now are still better than those alternatives.

But Javi is young, and Draco wants his mother free more than anything, and no matter what has happened between them Hermione can’t afford to deny Draco is a good wizard. She gnaws the cuticle on her thumbnail.

“What a face that is,” Harry hums, flopping down onto his couch next to her. Neville is singing in their kitchenette, heavy jars of herbs and spices zooming around his head like they were testing how close they could come to cracking him in his skull. If he were to split it open, red like a pomegranate, it would still be a better outcome than she or Harry in the kitchen for an extended period of time.

She curls her toes underneath Harry’s thigh and tears her eyes away from the students charming the lake’s frozen surface to flash their house colors or project profanities into the heavy grey sky.

“Do you ever think about the Dursley’s?”

Harry shrugs. “I’ve spoken to Dudley...three times? I think? Since I left. He’s gotten married, or something. I think, anyway. They’re having a baby...had a baby, now.”

“A baby,” Hermione repeats, whistling lowly.

“We’re all old.” Harry grabs at her ankle, sweeping his thumb in wide arcs there. She loves him very much, almost more so when he looks into the kitchen, smiling softly at Neville’s back. “Old and haggard. Why do you ask?”

“Because I don’t know what I’d do, if I were you.”

He looks at her shrewdly, his very green eyes catching light from their fireplace. Neville enchanted it to flicker every shade of the rainbow in turn, and it reflects off Harry’s glasses like a kaleidoscope. “I don’t either.”

Hermione smiles, leaning back further into the couch. “Do you think it’s a mistake?” 

She doesn’t clarify what she means, but she doesn’t have to. They’ve earned that much between them, after everything.

“I’ve talked to him more than Dudley,” Harry says slowly. He twists the simple gold band on his very brown finger, still tan from his and Neville’s impromptu anniversary holiday the week before last. “I don’t know if you...can get what you’re after. If he can do that. But he’s not a — I don’t know if he has any fight left in him, to be worried about that.”

“He can join the club,” Hermione sighs, rubbing at the space between her brows as if that helps the budding tension headache there. “I just. He’s visiting her today, and Javi gets nervous, still, and what if he...what if I played this wrong?”

“If it helps you,” Harry takes one of her hand in his, fingers slotting together like they did at seventeen, “if it helps you now, even if it’s a mistake later — if you don’t want it, later, that’s alright, isn't it?”

Neville props up in the doorframe, his arms crossed over his red and green Weasley sweater. “It won’t be a mistake.”

Harry’s brow creases, but he stays silent as Hermione tries to prompt her very thick throat into speaking. “You don’t think so?”

“We won last time,” Neville shrugs. “Don’t think he’s that stupid, all his other faults aside. Dinner’s ready, by the way.”

* * *

 

Corvie is waiting at her window when she returns to her flat that night. The letter is not signed, even sealed. As she unties it from his leg, she realizes it’s not even really a letter. On the back of a receipt from a muggle petrol station (a Coke, a Daim bar, a packet of cigarettes), a single word is written in a steady, elegant hand.

_ Yes _ . 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! Feedback is appreciated more than I can say.
> 
> Title from Oh, Wonder's "All We Do."


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